Plastic nonwoven webs formed by nonwoven extrusion processes such as, for example, meltblowing processes and spunbonding processes may be manufactured into products or components of products so inexpensively that the products could be viewed as disposable after only one or a few uses. Representatives of such products include garment materials, diapers, tissues, wipes, garments, mattress pads and feminine care products.
Nonwoven webs formed from nonelastic polymers such as, for example, polypropylene are generally considered nonelastic. The lack of elasticity usually restricts use of these nonwoven web materials from applications where elasticity is necessary or desirable such as, for example, diapers, mattress pads, feminine care products and some of the above mentioned garment materials.
Certain fabric finishing processes such as, for example, dyeing carried out at high dye bath temperatures utilizing roller arrangements that tension the material to be dyed have been observed to shrink webs of nonwoven fibers to a soft, drapeable elastic fabric which can be stretched and can recover to about its pre-stretched dimensions. Additionally, U.S. Pat. No. 3,949,128 to Ostermeier discloses a heat treated material with releasable bonds which can be stretched to about 65 percent and can recover to about its pre-stretched dimensions.
While the known elasticized fabrics provided may be useful for some purposes, fabrics having greater stretch and recovery characteristics are always desirable.